A few remarks about spamming bots ...

When Dte and I spent at least an hour a day each banning bots last year, it was decided to add questions to our registrations and the number of bots became manageable once more. I still check out nearly every new rego personally, but there are FAR fewer of them now that even look suspicious!!
 
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I'm down to maybe 4-5 bans a week. All of those appear to be human spammers rather than little bots and there's just not much that can be done with those. We seem to have hit a pretty good balance between keeping the boards clean without pissing off legit registrants, which as Myrthos mentioned many posts back is very important to us. Over the past year or so, the admins have spent a lot of time "building the wall" to keep the bulk of the bots out as well as creating some very useful tools to help us keep an eye on anyone suspicious that gets thru the gate. Kinda a shame for them to have to invest time "defending" the site, but the results say their time was well-spent.
 
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Yes, either Captcha's are "broken" by now, or someone organised a huge firm or company with thousands of human ( ! ) Captcha readers/breakers ...

In the Ulisses forum (Ulisses is the holder of the TDE pen & paper license), suddenl there was break-in at the beginning of this month ... The forum where I'm in has been outside of their focus by now ...
 
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Well … I think I've just witnessed a new kind of spam bot :

Name is that of "paulduminy" - which sounds to me very much like a garbled version of "paul dummy".

This spam-bot ? takes a topic title -> stores it in a variable -> and puts them into the own generic post.

Examples ( look at the thread titles ! ) :

Re: Starforce in Runaway 2?

von paulduminy » 16.02.2011, 08:39
Sorry to say that but I can't open this Starforce in Runaway 2 link in my system. I tried many time and also make normal troubleshooting also but not done yet . I am eager to saw this Starforce in Runaway 2 link.

(The post above this post actually contained a link which couldn't be opened - due to a change on that site the link directed to.)

Re: Warum Spoiler?

von paulduminy » 16.02.2011, 08:46
Grand Theft Auto 4: Warum Spoiler was very Fantastic Game i had ever played. Grand Theft Auto 4: Warum Spoiler was very enjoyable game for me. I like these Grand Theft Auto 4: Warum Spoiler Game.

Re: Dreamfall 2

von paulduminy » 16.02.2011, 08:39
I am wondering why there hasn’t been any news about this Dreamfall 2, other than some now becoming available supporting Dreamfall 2.

Re: Gray Matter min system

von paulduminy » 16.02.2011, 08:41
Gray Matter System Requirements are:
OS: Windows XP
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 @ 1.5 GHz / AMD Athlon XP 1500+
Memory: 512 Mb
Hard Drive: 7 Gb free
Video Memory: 128 Mb
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 6600 / ATI Radeon X1300
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard
Mouse
DVD Rom Drive.

And note that 2 of thse entries were made within the same Minute !

Okay, it IS possible to be that fast, I think (just look at me ;) ) - but this just nonense, imho, because both entries were within different sub-forums —- I don't think anyone could be THAT quick to jump between sub-forums that fast !
 
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We have had several such spam posts in the past which we usually catch and delete quickly. The community is also very helpful in drawing our attention to such posts. Thanks
 
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Okay.

It's that I'm constantly monitoring and trying to learn from the bots to be at least on the same level with them.

For someone trying to be a step ahead of the rest, an intellectually gifted person is the best counterattack. ;)
 
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I think I've found yet another form of spam.

Totally innocent spam.

In the dtp forums (German publisher of the Drakensang games), someone had posted this :

Hi Everyone,

I David Discol, a new member to this forum. I am very much interested in sports ticket, theatre tickets and concert tickets. I found this forum very informative and I am really very excited to take part here in discussions. Hope you will contribute your ideas and support me in my mission.

Thanks
David Duscol

This was the reply by a moderator there :

Since your topic has nothing to do with games published or distributed by DTP or video games at all, I've moved your posting to the Off Topic section.

I really wonder how you found this forum informative if you've interested in sports ticket, theatre tickets and concert tickets. But well… As long as you don't try to advertise something and just ask for help…

And then the spammer replied again :

Hi All,

I want to go see in American idol. Does anyone know and tell me, Where is the cheapest online ticket for US? If you have an any idea please suggest to me. I am waiting for your positive reply

Thanks and lot Advance
David Discol

Source : http://forum.dtp-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=18415&p=191573#p191573

I wonder what's this expect to be like … Here's my current assumption on that :

This is nothing but spam, sort of.

I assume that the spam in this is his name - I assume that he expects people to find out more about him via researching through his name.

Researching his name I found exactly what I had expected : A ticket selling service, running under his name.

So, now, we have reached a new dimension in Spam-Marketing : Simple "name-dropping".
 
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We've had a couple like that recently and they are no longer among the living!! :D Dte and I are getting very good at detecting spammers and we act quickly and decisively!!
 
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Good work ! :)
 
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This is actually the 2nd or 3rd time I see spam regarding a topic that might interest U.S. citizens, but no-one else, on the Belgian Larian Forums :

MLB is a locally watched sport, with people following their nearest team. most teams (with the exception of the yankees, red sox, cubs & dodgers) have few fans outside of their area. the games are on the local (fox) station, or the club's own station which is pushed out through the local cable provider. there isn't a demand to watch the mariners six times a week across the country. therefore, midwest FSN would gain little from blacking out the pirates games in california mlb blog. the price for mlb.tv a season reflects the nationwide demand for watching baseball everyday.i'm not sure i've explained this well enough.All of that might explain the pricing in the US market. But it doesn't really apply here in the UK. I'm guessing that the market for potential viewers is pretty much the same for both sports, over here.If mlb.tv succeeds in getting lots of new UK baseball fans, then I think the NFL should follow suit and lower the price of Gamepass - if they want lots of new UK fans too.There is a place that worth to visit,it cam provide many kinds of jerseys what you want ,especially,they sells not only cheap but high quality!

In the original text, there's embedded a link to an "MLB Blog" of some sort (which might be infected, I fear, but I haven't tried it out - I guess it might be infected, because this would be the ideal route to gain new "Zombie PCs" for Bot Networks.
Therefore I'm not posting the link here.
 
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There's also this. In Gamers-Odyssey, we do have a spambot named Spambot666, which comments seldomly many funny things, such as this:

An user named LinkMasterSword wanted to figure out about what kind of PC to buy with less money. Later on this particular spambot responded with this:

Πωλείται high end gaming PC στην εκπληκτική τιμή των 800 ευρώ.
Τώρα μπορείτε και εσείς να απολαμβάνετε τα τελευταία βίντεο παίγνια σε εξαιρετικές επιδόσεις.
Τελευταίας αιχμή technology:

AMD K6 300MHz
Voodoο 2 SLI 12 ΜΒ VR!
128 MB RAM
40 GB hard disk

Προλάβετε πριν εξαντληθεί η εξαιρετική τιμή. Αυτό ακριβώς http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/3000/antiku8hrwndo3.jpg

Which means:

A High end gaming PC is being sold with the incredible price of €800.
Now you also can enjoy the latest videogames with excellent performances.

Latest Technology:

AMD K6 300MHz
Voodoο 2 SLI 12 ΜΒ VR!
128 MB RAM
40 GB hard disk

Hurry before the price stocks out. Exactly this http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/3000/antiku8hrwndo3.jpg

:rofl: I cried from the laughs after reading from this particular bot such funny comments.
 
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Sounds rather like satire to me, lol
 
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Yeah, of all the peeps this bot only did hit LMS(LinkMasterSword) and that's why I cried from the laughs. :p

Whoever made this bot was very clever to start a really off-topic bot to write a lot of funny comments down. LOL
 
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Dte and I like to smash a few bots as a warm up before we head over to DDO to smash a few Kolbolds, et al!! :)
 
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Found at the dtp forums - anyone knows what this means ?

Code:
Very good and nice forum.

von ZJGrozer » 30.07.2011, 18:57 
Hi,
Very good and nice forum.

Здесь можно размещать разные ссылки? Если нет - удалите этот пост и мой профиль.

I want to spam any links here, if you dont want it please delete this post and my profile.

Thank you and sorry.
 
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Interesting : A new spammer named "sure" left an odd signature in its signature :


I could imagine a program filtering out every forum where this is set in, to avoid multiple spamming in the same, old forums …

This spammer left an odd reply elsewhere :

ocs123
Newbie
a.k.a.
ocs123 z




Posts 1
Registered 8/8/11
Member Is Offline

Soccer Role:

posted on 8/8/11 at 04:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by soccershins

And North Carolina boasts the #2, #4, and #21 prospects - Full Big Board


fdfdsfd

ocs123 z

The name of "ocs123" appears to be the spammer's *original* name, I guess !?
 
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Does it get any funnier ?

Code:
crystallan Offline




Registered: 25/08/11
Posts: 5 	

i am a new here



Coach Purses
History Of Coach Purses
_________________________
Administrator

This was like "WTF ?" to me - because this bot a) writes "I'm a new here" and writes "Administrator" as a signature … An admin just shouldn't greet the folks with a simple "I'm new here" … ;)

Edit : Another post from this "new admin" ;) :

Code:
crystallan Offline




Registered: 25/08/11
Posts: 5 	


hello all...

This is nice forum site..I am happy to join it. Thanks for accepting my request as a member of this forum site..............
crystallan here





Coach Purses
History Of Coach Purses
_________________________
Administrator
 
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Our latest version are bots that sign up with no spam in them (you can tell they aren't "real" users from a few clues), and then return several weeks later to add their spam. I guess the spammers have figured out that bot squashers in general tend to focus on new registrations.
 
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Ah, yes, I have already expected this.

In a few cases, they even post normal posts with absolutely no spam in them - the spam is in their signature or even only in their biio page ... (Fielsd "homepage", for example ...)
 
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